Living with Sherlock Holmes
by waveringshadow
Summary: John is haunted by the war and Sherlock is haunted by fears for John. Both have insecurities they are too proud to admit, but they inevitably find themselves seeking console in each other.
**Hi! I'm waveringshadow and this is my first Sherlock fic.**

 **As per usual, the cover art is my own work. I will probably do another more fitting one later, but currently that is the best I've got. It is of John, if you could not tell from the small portion of his jaw that is visible. I only had A5 watercolour paper to work with. Anyway, I better get on with it.**

Living with Sherlock Holmes changes a person. It sharpens you, prepares you for danger at every turn. You learn to act on pure instinct mixed with adrenaline and leave the thinking to Sherlock. Which is why, in the earliest hours of the morning, I almost punched a bleary eyed Sherlock in the face.

I had arrived back at Baker Street late that night and, after noting Sherlock was not present, swiftly collapsed into bed. I don't know exactly what woke me hours later, but I found my eyes snapping open and my heart aflutter with the misgivings you get when you sense a presence in the inky blackness that should not be there. I saw a shifting silhouette by the side of my bed near the door, and with stricken breaths I lifted my fist and let loose. There was a grunt of surprise and my eyes struggled to catch the movement that followed as my fist hit air. There was a brief pause as both persons in the room reassessed their situation. My mind was already trying to figure out how to get to the gun in the drawer by my bed when a whispered question interrupted my adrenalin driven scheming. "John?"

My panic was quickly replaced with irritation as I recognised the softened baritone of Sherlock's voice. "What are you doing in here?" I groaned as I collapsed back onto my pillow, bringing my thumb and forefinger to the bridge of my nose. There was a sullen silence, which made me frown. I was expecting some rapid command to get out of bed and follow him to some adventure in the London nightlife, but instead I was met with thrilling silence. My heart began to speed up again, but I told myself keep composure.

"I had a nightmare," he eventually admitted, his words running together in a hurried fashion. I tilted my head back in exasperation, buying time to think about my response.

"And you are here because?" I shifted my head to look towards the dark shape hovering at the side of my bed, the silhouette of the lamp partially blocking the faint light that reflected off his pale features.

"I- uh… I don't really know." I heard the soft crumple of clothing as he shifted back and forth between me and the door. I lifted my head to try and study him, my mouth slightly agape. "Night John!" he eventually uttered rapidly, before leaving as suddenly as he came. I stared after him for a still moment, before giving a rough sigh and letting my upper body fall back into the bed. My forehead fell into a frown as I tried to convince myself to go back to sleep.

()()()()()

Life went on as usual after that small incident. Cases came and went, I practised at a nearby health clinic during the day, and found myself in multiple life threatening situations in the evenings. Occasionally I met various people who learnt of what I spent my spare time doing, and learnt to worry about it, but I would come home from another bland day of work and see that almost manic grin of Sherlock Holmes' and a case spread out before him, and I didn't even bother to remove my coat. He never mentioned the strange behaviour of that night, and I quickly dismissed it.

I went on with my life, Sherlock went on with his, and our lives would clash and blend together at random moments as cases put the whole apartment under pressure. The next time I was woken up in the late hours of the night, it wasn't anyone at the door or by my bed that interrupted my precious few hours of rest. No, it was my own mind as it thought it would play a rendition of my time in Afghanistan. I woke up in a cold sweat, my face flushed and my breath heavy. After some moments of getting my breath back under control, I wiped my face on my sleeve, then pressed my feet to the rough, carpeted floor. I could see the light of the living room leaking in under my door, the stream stretching out but not quite reaching my feet. Sherlock must have been on one of his late night stints.

I tried to gain composure, then shuffled my way into the kitchen, needing to get out of my muggy room. I wiped wearily at my bleary eyes, squinting against the sudden light. Sherlock was at the table, doing something finicky with a pair of forceps in a petri dish. I didn't really want to know what he was up to. He very briefly lifted his head to give me a sideways look before returning to his work, the only acknowledgment he gave that he knew I was there. I hovered in the doorway for a while, wobbling sleepily, not sure whether to sit down or return to my bed and try to forget the horrors that still filled my mind every time I shut my eyes.

"Nightmares?" Sherlock eventually asked in a low voice. I started slightly, not expecting him to talk, I sighed and ran my hand through my hair, before taking a seat across from him.

"Yeah."

"Want to- err… talk about it?" I looked up from my hands to stare at the mop of dark hair that was all I could see of Sherlock as he had his head bent over his work. He lifted his own gaze to catch my eye briefly before looking back down again. "Sometimes I dream that I make a mistake. I get something wrong, and everyone suffers because of me." His eyes flickered up and back down again, and I have to snap my mouth shut. "You die because of me."

I grunted as I pulled myself out of my seat and turned the kettle on. "You have this dream often?"

I turned around and leant back on my hands onto the bench, looking at the back of his head. "Often enough," he replied, ever shifting his head.

"I dream about the war," I stated, trying to get a reaction out of him, but there was nothing. Once I started, however, I couldn't help but continue talking. "So many young souls, disappearing before your eyes. And me, desperately trying to patch them back together."

"You're good at that," he said, hissing as he burnt his finger slightly on a hot beaker, "patching people together."

I chuckled at that, pouring two cups of tea as the kettle had finished boiling. I pulled some burn cream that I now kept within reach in the kitchen because of similar incidents and passed it to him. I then placed one mug beside him and moved to the opposite side of the table, hugging my mug with both hand with my elbows on the tabled. "People like you?"

"Yes," he stated simply, rubbing the cream into his finger almost sheepishly.

I finished my tea, he finished his experiment, and we both headed to our own rooms.

()()()()()

The nightmares came back the next night. I can vaguely remember writhing about in the bed, fighting against the blankets that contracted around my body like a boa constrictor as a wriggled my way through the haunting scenes in my head. I resurfaced from my psychedelic streams in order to note an unusual creak outside my door, before succumbing once more to the grips of poignant sloom. It felt like both an age and a moment when I next became conscious, though frightful images still flitted across my vision in the darkness of the room. Then there was a whisper, the rush of air past teeth sending hot slivers of panic down my sides, but as the word progressed I relaxed at the familiar sound of the voice.

"John?"

I let out a stricken breath, and placed my sweat coated forehead in my hands. Once I regained composure, blinking a few times to try and clear my vision of lingering incubi, I simply whispered, "Nightmares?"

I was met with a still silence, the type of silence that comes when you stand on the edge of a cliff. The moment before vertigo tips you forward or backward, the moment before your blood roars and you heart flutters, the moment before the wind rushes past your ears.

I felt it before I heard it, his hand on the end of the bed, spreading his weight before his whole body followed. He perched on the bed, before lying out beside me, on the far opposite side of the bed so, apart from a slight tip in the mattress and the occasional rush of air through his nose, I would barely know he was there. I made no movement, trying to decide whether I thought this was acceptable or not, but then I thought of how the batter of guns and roars of desperate men echoed in the emptiness of the room. I thought how Sherlock's breath interrupted those echoes and brought them to a halt as they were absorbed by his aura, and my eyes were already growing heavy in the silence that followed. As my body relaxed the moisture that coated my body, reeking of despair, grew cold and I attempted to pull the sheets up to my chin, only to find that Sherlock's body weight kept them pinned at my waist. I tried my best to not grumble aloud. I gave another tug, which received a disgruntled mumble from the apparently sleeping Sherlock.

Frustrated, I let my hands fall to my sides in defeat. I lay back and stared at the patterns the faint light through the blind created on the white plaster board. My mind drifted in meaningless circles, the way one's mind does when awoken the dead of the night and is condemned to lie in the stillness until morning's light called the morning post and it was safe to come out of hiding once more. My circling was interrupted by a sharp inhalation from my left, and I could almost hear Sherlock's eyes snap open.

"John!" he called in a constricted voice, his hand patting the space beside me until his hand came to rest on my shoulder. His hand tightened desperately around my shoulder for a shaky moment, before relaxing on top of me. After overcoming the slight shock I felt, I reached my right hand up and patted where his hand rested upon my shoulder. He now began mumbling to himself in a soft, strained voice, and I could only capture snippets of it.

"…not in time… not enough time… John… my fault… mea culpa… I'm sorry…"

I tried to find a response to such mutterings, but no words came to me. I just took his hand from my shoulder and squeezed it. Suddenly, I could sense his eyes on me.

"John?" he questioned in a slightly stronger voice. "I'm not a hero John. I can't be the hero. Not every time."

"No one expects you to be a hero," I replied, frowning slightly.

"I did. I expected me to be the hero, but who's going to save them when I fail. Who saves the hero?" his words rushed past his lips erratically, taking a life of their own as they travelled through the darkness from his mouth to my ears. I gave a short laugh.

"That would be me, you numpty."

There was a punctuated pause, short and sharp.

"You?"

"Mmyes." I nodded slightly, my movement sending a ripple down our joined hands.

"Oh."

I gave an amused hum, patted his hand twice then turned to the other side of the bed, hoping to actually get some sleep before morning. There was a thoughtful pause before, "So who saves you then?"

I had found a comfortable position, so I did not bother to move, instead I simply replied, "You, I hope."

"Oh."

Silence fell once more, and I had finally started to drift off when there was a sudden commotion of movement beside me and I felt the sheet finally being released from where it was being held captive against my waist. The sheet was thrown upward above the both of us, then ballooned back down, gently caressing my bare skin with feather light kisses as it fell back down, causing a light tickling sensation up through my body. I felt his warm breath against the back of my neck, and my eyelids fluttered as I fought to keep them closed.

"Thank you, John," he whispered, before letting out a heavy breath, laden with all the worries and strains that were now making their way out of his body. After noting that he did not seem to want to say anymore, I nestled down in my end of the pillow and let Sherlock's light breaths lull me back into a dreamless sleep. And I think, in that moment, we both realised that our relationship was a lot simpler than it had first appeared. I do not know about Sherlock, but I think I could live with that.

' **Mea culpa' is Latin for 'through my fault' if you didn't know, and the full phrase is 'mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa', meaning 'through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault' and is used to confess sin. I'll leave that with you.**


End file.
